July 23, 2025

New Record Set For Deaths From Climate And Weather Disasters

July 23, 2025/ Francis Menton

During the first half of 2025, a new record was set for the number of deaths caused by climate and weather disasters. Can you guess what that record was?
If you read left-wing media sources, and believe anything they say, you might think that the recent record has something to do with a large and growing number of deaths. Recent articles in sources like CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and CBS News all explicitly claim that climate change is making weather events “deadlier,” or leading to increasing numbers of deaths, or some variation of that same message. I’m sure if you checked thirty such “mainstream” news sources over the past year, all thirty of them would have pieces parroting that same narrative.
Therefore you might be surprised by the actual record that has been set: The first half of 2025 (January to June) has seen the fewest number of deaths from climate and weather disasters of any first half year this century.

July 21, 2025

Comments On The Latest Revelations About The Russia!! Hoax

July 21, 2025/ Francis Menton

It all began a couple of months before the 2016 presidential election. That’s when candidate Hillary Clinton began accusing Russia of interfering in the upcoming contest, and simultaneously accusing her opponent Donald Trump of “urging” the Russians to engage in some unspecified form of “hack” as the means of interference.
From the New York Times, September 5, 2016:
Hillary Clinton accused Russian intelligence of interfering with the American election, implying that President Vladimir V. Putin viewed a victory by Donald J. Trump as a destabilizing event that would weaken the United States and buttress Russian interests. . . . “We’ve never had the nominee of one of our major parties urging the Russians to hack,” Mrs. Clinton said in a news conference. “I want everyone — Democrat, Republican, Independent — to understand the real threat that this represents.”
The accusations of Russian interference in the election accelerated from there, and then really took off after the election, in December 2016 and January 2017.

July 18, 2025

July 18, 2025/ Francis Menton

How quickly things change.
It was only two years ago, in 2023, that I was writing posts compiling long lists of quotes from climate activists warning that all assets used for production of coal, oil and gas were about to become obsolete and “stranded.” After all, wind and solar were (supposedly) cheaper and cleaner for generating electricity, which could then power anything and everything. Therefore anyone stupid enough to make further investments in producing fossil fuels would lose everything. Here is one such post from June 2023, and another from February 2023.
If you look today, you can still find predictions in 2025 that fossil fuel assets will shortly become “stranded.” (Here is one from Bloomberg from March 6: “Investors Risk $2.3 Trillion of Stranded Fossil Fuel Assets.”). But such predictions are becoming fewer and fewer.
Instead, what looks far more likely is that large portions, if not the entire business, of “renewable” electricity generation from wind and sun is likely to get “stranded.”

July 15, 2025

July 15, 2025/ Francis Menton

Javier Milei (pictured above) was elected President of Argentina in October 2023, and took office in December of that year. He promised large cuts to government spending, bureaucracy, and regulation as the means to revive a long moribund Argentine economy crippled by government over-spending, over-regulation, excess unionism, and corporate cronyism.
But would Milei’s program work?
I last wrote about Milei’s implementation of his program in this post in November 2024. That post reported that Milei had succeeded in putting through substantial cuts in government spending and bureaucracy, but that the economy had experienced a recession during his first year in office in 2024. Likely much of that reported recession was not real, reflecting instead the removal from the GDP accounts of wasteful government spending that perversely had been counted as an addition to the economy. But would the economy then revive in 2025 as a result of the new program?

July 12, 2025

July 12, 2025/ Francis Menton

What does the future hold as to large additions to heavily subsidized wind and solar electricity generation capacity in the U.S.?
For those paying attention, the legislative back-and-forth of the One Big Beautiful Bill, as it made its way through Congress, has been something of a roller coaster ride. At this point, I am betting that the utility-scale wind and solar industries are near the end of their line.
This post reports on the latest development, which is an Executive Order signed by President Trump on July 7. But count on the wind and solar subsidy farmers to keep fighting to the last dollar of their government handouts.
Note that it is my view, from extensive study of the subject, that wind and solar generators of electricity are essentially useless, not to mention dangerous and costly, for a modern grid that needs reliable generation 24/7/365. Nobody will invest private capital in them without huge government subsidies.

July 09, 2025

July 09, 2025/ Francis Menton

Currently at the U.S. Supreme Court, the conservatives hold a 6-3 majority. While there are exceptions, most of the politically sensitive cases break along the 6-3 ideological lines.
Recent prominent examples of cases breaking in that way include Trump v. CASA (limiting the ability of district judges to issue nationwide injunctions against executive actions); U.S. v. Skrmetti (upholding Tennessee statute banning transgender surgeries on minors); and Loper Bright v. Raimondo (ending the rule that courts should “defer” to administrative agencies as to interpretation of their regulations). In these and numerous other cases, the three liberal justices (Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson) would have reached the opposite result.
But the 6-3 conservative majority is very much a result of happenstance.